Exposes the fatal flaws in the ranking of people according to their supposed gifts and limits by discussing the development of the theory of limits and by reanalyzing the data on which it is based.

"In Full House, Gould corrects the prevalent, anthropocentric view of the world with an eloquent argument for a new paradigm of progress in which variety - not complexity - is the true measure of excellence. In the process, Full House teaches us how to read trends as changes in variation within full systems, rather than as "things moving somehwere"."--BOOK JACKET.

Explains why the diversity of the Burgess Shale is important in understanding our past and evolution.

The world's most revered and eloquent interpreter of evolutionary ideas offers a work of explanatory force unprecedented in our time--the history and origins of the three core commitments of classical Darwinism. 88 line illustrations. 4 tables.

"If Stephen Jay Gould did not exist it would hardly be possible to invent him. Who else among scientists who write reaches so far or grasps so surely the "pretty pebbles" that together make up the amplitude of life?" "Eight Little Piggies is the sixth volume in a series of essays, begun in 1974 in the pages of Natural History under the rubric "This View of Life." Now numbering more than 200 in an unbroken string, they comprise a unique achievement...

"In 1972 Stephen Jay Gould took the scientific world by storm with his paper on punctuated equilibrium, written with Niles Eldredge. Challenging a core assumption of Darwin's theory of evolution, it launched the career of one of the most influential evolutionary biologists of our time - perhaps the best known since Darwin." "Now, thirty-five years later, and five years after his untimely death, Punctuated Equilibrium (originally published as the central...

Stephen Jay Gould's tenth and final collection of essays which originally appeared in Natural history magazine.

Collects forty-four key segments from the late paleontologist and evolutionary biologist's books, papers, and essays, in a collection that includes an assortment of previously unpublished articles and speeches.